GrahamS
ClioSport Club Member
335d
Thought I'd post up about a new toy I got in the post yesterday. It's the new Parksafe PSDVR009. For those who read autoexpress you may have seen int advertised.
Supposed to be over £150 when I spoke to the lad on the phone but a misprint sees it down to £99.
I'm sure most folk have seen Russian dash cam compilations of horrendous crashes. In Russia they love a dash cam.
Working for a car insurer I thought I'd give this a go as I constantly hear about staged accidents and scenarios where it is difficult to prove where fault lies without witnesses or cctv. Previously I've used a mount from ebay specific to my iphone which sits on my windscreen using a suction cup and an app called witness that was 69p. Its be jolly good and caught lots of near misses and hooligans but it often registers the wrong speed (likely down to cruddy iphone GPS) and appears to have a couple of bugs where it stops recording randomly. There is also no "run in background feature" so it has to be on the screen all the time. Depending on which Iphone you have it can record in a number of different qualities. That sounds awful but I would recommend it and have done to several of my friends who have other better iphones (4s/5) which it seems to work better on.
On to the parksafe
This is what you get in the box
The unit is a good quality device with expandable memory up to 32gb using micro SD cards. It's got an HDMI and micro usb port, 3.5mm jack and the bracket has 6 different angle settings to allow for all windscreen angles. The lens is 120 degrees and does full HD recording that can be viewed immediately on the 1.5" screen.
It's easy to use once you get the hang of its 3 buttons and work out what they do. The instructions are useful certainly and I enjoyed the translation "long press up" and "long press down" pretending also to be a personal trainer. There are loads of settings to change the exposure, clip length and other bits. There is also the facility to take still photos up to 4mp. Albeit Autoexpress says 5.
Video quality is good and the almost fish eye lens gives a sense of huge speed when it is relatively low. The field of view is the main issue I had with the iphone method. It only capture directly ahead. You can see this on my video of me going round brands hatch. The parksafe camera is able to get people in the lane next to you just about.
Software comes on a small CD and needs no installation; it runs straight from the disc and uses google maps to show where the video was recorded, where you are at the point you are watching on the video and speed is also show in MPH.
There are only a couple niggles I have which really don't bother me that much. I feel like I've got a bargain
There is a small LED which flashes slowly when it records. This is quite annoying at night but not noticeable during the day. The audio quality is quite poor and rather fuzzy. I wouldn't use this as a track camera and sound is unlikely to be relevant when proving liability in an accident unless you are using your horn as a warning which could still be heard with ease.
Conclusion
For the price of £100 I'm pleased, accept the niggles but overwhelmingly think this is a very good camera. Compared to other similar models for over £200 this is a good mid range solution. If you were hit by a passing vehicle on a country road it may go down as a 50:50 as it's difficult to prove fault. Just saving of your excess pays for something like this straight away. If you don't crash its nice to have the peace of mind....there are some nutters out there! I'm certain we'll see more and more of these on the roads and discounts on your insurance for using one one day
A fairly terrible video of it in use I'm affraid as it was at night and I had turned off the microphone. I hope you can see the kind of tools you catch though W69 JAW. This chap was sitting behind me tailgating with his fog lights on as if I could go any quicker in a stream of traffic!
[video=youtube_share;zMDFNfHawm4]http://youtu.be/zMDFNfHawm4[/video]
Supposed to be over £150 when I spoke to the lad on the phone but a misprint sees it down to £99.
I'm sure most folk have seen Russian dash cam compilations of horrendous crashes. In Russia they love a dash cam.
Working for a car insurer I thought I'd give this a go as I constantly hear about staged accidents and scenarios where it is difficult to prove where fault lies without witnesses or cctv. Previously I've used a mount from ebay specific to my iphone which sits on my windscreen using a suction cup and an app called witness that was 69p. Its be jolly good and caught lots of near misses and hooligans but it often registers the wrong speed (likely down to cruddy iphone GPS) and appears to have a couple of bugs where it stops recording randomly. There is also no "run in background feature" so it has to be on the screen all the time. Depending on which Iphone you have it can record in a number of different qualities. That sounds awful but I would recommend it and have done to several of my friends who have other better iphones (4s/5) which it seems to work better on.
On to the parksafe
This is what you get in the box
- Gps receiver in 3m sticky pad
- 12v ciggy socket with lots of cable attached to allow neat routing
- The camera its self
- 8gb micro SD and usb reader
- Software
- Instructions
- HDMI lead
- USB lead
- AV lead
The unit is a good quality device with expandable memory up to 32gb using micro SD cards. It's got an HDMI and micro usb port, 3.5mm jack and the bracket has 6 different angle settings to allow for all windscreen angles. The lens is 120 degrees and does full HD recording that can be viewed immediately on the 1.5" screen.
It's easy to use once you get the hang of its 3 buttons and work out what they do. The instructions are useful certainly and I enjoyed the translation "long press up" and "long press down" pretending also to be a personal trainer. There are loads of settings to change the exposure, clip length and other bits. There is also the facility to take still photos up to 4mp. Albeit Autoexpress says 5.
Video quality is good and the almost fish eye lens gives a sense of huge speed when it is relatively low. The field of view is the main issue I had with the iphone method. It only capture directly ahead. You can see this on my video of me going round brands hatch. The parksafe camera is able to get people in the lane next to you just about.
Software comes on a small CD and needs no installation; it runs straight from the disc and uses google maps to show where the video was recorded, where you are at the point you are watching on the video and speed is also show in MPH.
There are only a couple niggles I have which really don't bother me that much. I feel like I've got a bargain
There is a small LED which flashes slowly when it records. This is quite annoying at night but not noticeable during the day. The audio quality is quite poor and rather fuzzy. I wouldn't use this as a track camera and sound is unlikely to be relevant when proving liability in an accident unless you are using your horn as a warning which could still be heard with ease.Conclusion
For the price of £100 I'm pleased, accept the niggles but overwhelmingly think this is a very good camera. Compared to other similar models for over £200 this is a good mid range solution. If you were hit by a passing vehicle on a country road it may go down as a 50:50 as it's difficult to prove fault. Just saving of your excess pays for something like this straight away. If you don't crash its nice to have the peace of mind....there are some nutters out there! I'm certain we'll see more and more of these on the roads and discounts on your insurance for using one one day
A fairly terrible video of it in use I'm affraid as it was at night and I had turned off the microphone. I hope you can see the kind of tools you catch though W69 JAW. This chap was sitting behind me tailgating with his fog lights on as if I could go any quicker in a stream of traffic!
[video=youtube_share;zMDFNfHawm4]http://youtu.be/zMDFNfHawm4[/video]
